


I Thought You Always Wanted to Get Married in the Boathouse

by geniusbillionaireplaygirlphilanthropist (teaberryblue)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Activism, American Icons, Captain America - Freeform, Cultural Icons, Epistolary, Ireland, LBGT, Letter, M/M, New York City, rejected proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 05:45:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/pseuds/geniusbillionaireplaygirlphilanthropist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is in Ireland, and Tony can't go.  So he gets drunk and writes a letter.  On paper.  With a pen and everything.  And ends up waxing poetic about what it means to be a hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Thought You Always Wanted to Get Married in the Boathouse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainproof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainproof/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Two's a Crowd](https://archiveofourown.org/works/772207) by [rainproof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainproof/pseuds/rainproof). 



> This is a gift for rainproof because she is in Ireland and I know she's been thinking about how to finish her story. This isn't a suggestion of how she should finish it, but it has a lot of inside jokes and I'm not entirely sure it's fit for public consumption. It is absolutely not going to make sense to anyone who hasn't read her fic. If you want to read something that is probably more accessible, I will direct you toward my longer, ongoing fic, [Dear Captain America](http://archiveofourown.org/works/963943/chapters/1889989), which presumably takes place in a similar, if not identical universe.
> 
> Also, I've been thinking a lot about my favorite comic characters and how I feel about their places as cultural icons. I've been writing a lot about the importance of LGBTQ heroes. And I kind of thought the two meshed perfectly. But this is mostly me using Tony as a mouthpiece to say some stuff I've been saying other ways.
> 
> If you want to read more letters between Adult Tony and Steve, try out [1796 Broadway](http://archiveofourown.org/works/972937/chapters/1912625), in which I write Steve and rainproof writes Tony.

Steve,

I hope your flight was as pleasant as could be expected without my company. (I know it was fine, but I have no idea what people put in paper letters. You were right about post offices still existing! Fascinating! And here I've been paying couriers since 2005.) I can't even remember the last time I wrote something with a pen that wasn't a) an autograph b) on a check c) on my hand. 

I'm still very sorry about the Ireland problem. I had no idea that whole countries would deny someone entry for anything other than actual acts of terrorism, even if they were dreadful accidents that just happened to look a lot like terrorism in the aftermath. I'm heartened by the fact that they would still welcome Iron Man into the country, but until I get back samples on that Filipino plastic, it's unlikely that wearing the suit for the duration of an extended visit is a tenable solution. Please convey my sincerest apologies about the Doonbeg incident and let them know it won't happen again. Not that it can happen again, since the hotel isn't there any more. It was a shitty hotel, anyway. They didn't even have touchscreen controls for the lights and windows. (You might want to leave that part out if and when you plead my case.)

I'm eating the last of that carbonara you made as I write this. Please excuse the grease stains. I'm not looking forward to the next few weeks of actual (not feigned) bachelorhood, but I am pretty sure the thing I will miss the most is your cooking. And watching you cook. And competing for your attention while you cook. Although Thor's informed me that he's excited to have a takeout buddy now that Natasha decided that she and Clint are doing that weird diet. He seems excited about this place he found on Seamless that only serves macaroni and cheese. They have a macaroni and cheeseburger, which is exactly what it sounds like. And macaroni and cheese pie in a radioactive orange cheddar crust, and I'm pretty sure I saw dessert-flavored macaroni and cheese on the menu. I'll let you know how it is. I'll probably let you know how it is before you get this letter. 

This is all building up to something, I promise. I just need to get there.

I have to go to some charity thing tonight, for widows and orphans or widowed orphans or something, and I keep thinking about what it would be like to walk in there with you on my arm. I'm not even thinking about how _scandalized_ Page Six would be, in the beginning (even if that would be fun). But once everyone's interest had waned, and I could use you as an excuse to retreat to a corner, instead of having my ear talked off by some insufferable socialite activist who tries to guilt me over the money SI has made off our goverment's repeated, terrible decisions regarding warfare, all while accepting a check CUT from that money in the name of their cause celebre. What they don't seem to understand is that SI would have made that cash in whatever way was most expedient, wars or no. I really should start keeping a file of which charities' boards claim to hate me and everything I stand for.

Right. Building up. Things. Not changing the subject.

I've been thinking about how to solve the Boathouse problem. I still don't really see why anyone is objecting to the idea of me marrying Pepper. It seems silly to waste a perfectly good wedding, and from a rationale standpoint, it's airtight. Plus, then we can register for gifts, although I suspect that it would be in poor taste for me to accept any gifts other than donations to apt charities in my name, but I really want to run around department stores with those registry guns. It's laser tag, but with vases. We could register for things we want people to donate to women's shelters and schools and orphanages in our name. We would still get to dress up, and you'd get to give a toast and tell everyone how wonderful I am, which I know is your favorite thing to do. (Second favorite. I'm not going to write any more about that. I'm going to go dunk my head in cold water.)

Back. Wet head. Not really, I just got more coffee. And then I remembered that this wasn't like chatting, and I didn't have to tell you I was back, because you wouldn't know where the breaks in this letter happened, apart from the fact that I can't find the same pen I was using before. I know I stirred my coffee with it, but I have no idea where it went after that. So. The trouble is, I can't cancel the reservation. If Tony Stark cancels a reservation of that magnitude, someone is going to get wind of it. There was a day when I could have just paid someone off, but now it all goes into computer systems and it's automatically traceable. You know, the NSA probably already all went out and bought their tuxes. So if I cancel something like that, people are going to actually start looking more closely at my personal life and try to guess at whom I was dating, so if you're comfy in your closet (I say that only as a metaphor and completely non-judgmentally, of course), it would be a bad, bad idea, because someone might poke their nose in there. 

But I also have been thinking there's something I need to say to you about all this. This is what I've been building to. We talked about what things were like for you, growing up, why you don't want people to know you like men (even perfect, Adonis-like genius billionaire playboy philanthropist boyfriend-type men), and I get that. Well, I don't get it, but I appreciate it. But we haven't talked about me. And this part is about me, and not about me and you. Or it is about me and you, but it's about angsty-self-doubting-teenaged-Tony and legendary-American-hero-Steve, which isn't really the same thing.

So I was a lucky kid. My father wasn't accepting, and he was pissed as fuck when the press outed me, but he didn't give enough of a shit and believed enough in family legacy that I wasn't going to get kicked out of my house. (And anyway, he knew that if he tried to kick me out, I would have just rewired the security system and snuck back in.) But even being who I was, you know, you're a kid, you have a lot of doubts. And there weren't really a lot of great gay public role models back then. The ones we had, half of them got shot or got AIDS. Hell, plenty of them came out the same time they told everybody they had AIDS. And who was I left with? Elton John? I mean, I remember when rock was young, me and Susie had so much fun, but fuck if he's exactly the sort of man a kid like me was going to identify with. 

You know who I identified with? 

You're waiting for me to say it, right? I mean, I don't even really have to write it. But I do. 

You know who I identified with?

Captain America. 

Oh, hell, I'm writing this with a pen. I can write it all big and curly and in glitter if I want to.

****

# **CAPTAIN AMERICA**

You know what the difference would be, for a kid like me or a kid like you, growing up now, if Captain America just got up and said, hey, sure, I like men? I know you said coming out would alienate a lot of the people who look up to you, but they're the ones who are closeminded bigoted assholes. I'm the corporate big business evil empire built on the backs of a slaving middle class monster, right? You're fucking AMERICA, Steve, and America's supposed to be about equality and all that great idealistic shit. America's supposed to be about doing things because they're right and not because they're popular. 

(And before you ask, yes, I have been drinking. Writing hard shit to write is just as hard as saying it out loud, it appears. But I still believe all of this, Steve, and I believe it even when I'm sober. And I learned plenty of it from reading comics about you.) 

I guess you could come right back at me and say, well, Tony, everybody knows volumes about your sexual preferences, why can't those kids look up to you? I don't want kids looking up to me. I'm a terrible role model! I'm drinking RIGHT NOW, Steve! Okay, maybe I do, a little, because I really do like adoring fans, but when it comes down to it, I don't embody the ideals I want fine young American men and women to espouse. You do. You're the real thing, Steve. The best hero. (That part I probably wouldn't say sober). 

You know how crazy this is for me, Steve? I think every boy's first mancrush is on a comic book character, but none of them ever bag that comic book character when they grow up. They don't get to fuck that comic book character's brains out whenever they want (except when said comic book character has to go to Ireland and they've been barred entry). That comic book character doesn't make amazing fucking puttanesca sauce. That comic book character isn't suddenly real and scandalously younger in a way that skews the whole idol/fan dynamic well the fuck out the window. That comic book character stays perfect and idealized and can do no wrong, and doesn't get sulky or punch his fist through a wall when he's scared or try to hide who he is in public. So I don't know who I am when I'm saying this. I don't know if I'm speaking as the dispenser of older-wiser-more-worldly-experience, I don't know if I'm speaking as a selfish boyfriend who's just come up with yet another line of reasoning he thinks might convince you to give him what he wants, I don't know if I'm speaking as the kid I used to be, begging his hero to think about all the other kids like us who are out there right now thinking that their heroes won't ever live through their problems. 

I'm not asking you to marry me. I'm not even asking you to wear that stupid fucking ring. I'm not asking you to tell me what to do with the Boathouse, or to write me back. You don't have to write me back.

I'm just asking you to think about this. And to hurry home. I'm missing you hard, already, and it's only been thirty-six hours. Fucking weeks, who invented those?

My hand hurts. Who knew hand-writing shit hurt this bad? 

Signing off.

Tony


End file.
